Ice Age
This article is about the first movie. For other uses, please see Ice Age (disambiguation). '''Ice Age ' is a 2002 computer-animated movie made by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha and is the first in the Ice Age Series. The film was originally going to be traditionally 2D animated by Fox Animation Studios but the company went bankrupt after the major loss from it's box-office bomb Titan AE. Wedge and Saldanha quickly picked up the project and transferred production to Fox's CGI division, Blue Sky Studios. Synopsis Set in the Ice Age, three sub-zero heroes go on a risky adventure to return a abandoned human infant to it's tribe. Plot The film begins with a squirrel known as Scrat, who is trying to find a location to store his prized acorn. Eventually, as he tries to hide it, he causes an avalanche. He barely escapes, but finds himself stepped on by a herd of prehistoric animals. The animals are trying to avoid the ice age by migrating south. Sid, a clumsy ground sloth left behind by his family, is attacked by two Brontops whom he angered. Sid is soon saved by Manfred ("Manny"), an agitated mammoth who fights them off. Not wanting to be alone and unprotected, Sid follows Manny. Meanwhile, Soto, the leader of a Smilodon pride wants revenge on a group of humans by eating the chief's son, Roshan, alive. There is an attack on the human camp, causing Roshan's mother to be separated from the rest. Soto's lieutenant, Diego, is sent to find and bring the baby back. Sid and Manny spot Nadia near the lake having survived her trip over the waterfall. She has only enough strength to trust her baby to Manny before she disappears. After much persuasion by the sloth, they decide to return Roshan (nicknamed "Pinky") but when they get to the human camp, the humans are gone. They meet up with Diego, who convinces the pair to let him help by tracking the humans. The four travel on, with Diego secretly leading them to an ambush. Soon they reach a cave where Sid and Diego learn about Manny's past and his previous interactions with the humans, where his wife and son were killed, leaving Manny a cynical loner. At the end of the film, Diego, Manny and Sid battle Soto's pack and a short fight ensues. Diego fights against Soto, and Soto knocks Diego out. As Soto closes in for the kill on Manny, Diego leaps and stops Soto, who wounds Diego in the process. Manny, in vengeance, knocks Soto into a wall of rocks, where sharp icicles fall on Soto, killing him. Manny and Sid manage to return the baby to his tribe, and Diego rejoins them, as the group begin heading off to warmer climates. 20,000 years later, Scrat is shown on a tropical island, with a coconut to replace his lost acorn, but as he proceeds to pack the coconut, it causes a volcanic eruption. Subplot There is also a subplot where an animal named Scrat makes many comical attempts to bury his beloved acorn. His misfortunes include getting chased by an enormous glacier, being struck by lightning, attempting to thaw out the acorn by a fire too long so that it accidentally took the form of a kernel of popcorn, and finally getting frozen in an ice cube along with his much sought after nut. 20,000 years into the future, the ice cube washes up on the shore of an island. The sun slowly melts the cube, thawing Scrat and the ice surrounding his acorn, which is barely out of reach, and ends up being removed from the ice cube by the tide. Scrat then explodes out of the ice cube in anger and hits his head repetitively on a tree, which drops a coconut. Believing it to be a giant acorn, Scrat's anger immediately turns to glee at this new find. He tries to pack it into the ground as he did previously with his acorns, but in the process causes a volcanic eruption. Scrat is known to be similar to the Laotian rock rat. Scrat also got his own short film entitled Gone Nutty, where he loses his meticulously-organized collection of acorns in a catastrophic chain of events occurring after ramming his acorn into the hole in the exact middle of the collection. He remains with one which is reduced to an ashen crisp after it went crashing down on him with an impact like a missile, ultimately causing the tectonic shift. Characters The characters are all prehistoric animals. The animals can talk to and understand each other and are voiced by a variety of famous actors. Like many films of prehistoric life, the rules of time periods apply very loosely, as many of the species shown in the film never actually lived in the same areas, let alone the same time periods. Plotholes and inconsistency *Nadia's necklace Manny was offered from Runar disappears within a few moments. Trivia *Scrat gets squashed by a mammoth at the beginning of the movie. However, no mammoth is seen the the large crowd of animals. No mammoth apart from Manny was seen until Ellie is seen in the second movie. *John Leguizamo tried at least 30 different voices for Sid. *Sid refers to global warming and the impeding flood at the end of the movie which links to the sequel Ice Age: The Meltdown. *The T.Rex seen in the cave bores similarities to Momma from Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Deleted scenes Originally, Sid was trying to avoid another sloth named Sylvia. He manages to lose her by putting her in the path of some migrating Glyptodon, who unknowingly carry her off when she got caught on their backs. Later he makes it look like Diego had killed him, but she saw he was faking, so she deserted him in anger. This segment was still used in the movie, but was used for Sid to avoid the two brontotheres who were still after him, as they fell for the trick. It was kept in the storybook version, however. The deleted scenes can be viewed separately, or in Nutty Movie Mode, both of which are included on Disc 1 of the two-disc Special Edition DVD. Soundtrack Reception Critical reception was positive with 78% on Rotten Tomatoes http://au.rottentomatoes.com/m/ice_age/ and it was nominated an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. It grossed a successful $383,257,136 worldwide. http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=iceage.htm External Links *Official Website *Ice Age at the Internet Movie Database *Ice Age at Rotten Tomatoes *Ice Age at Box Office Mojo Category:Movies